ridiculous how
all of life's particulars
stubbornly refuse,
over time, to refine—
how blood
and saliva don't distill
like a wine—
how frangible
stem cells don't
collapse, they multiply.
But at least we catch
a break when all the dots
start to connect,
and all of those
stubborn, hard knots
where life's events
soon will get
fused to our biased
remembrances of them
eventually combine,
and then cement
into a spine—
from which long,
nervy pipes unspool
and start winding
with generous
thickness through all
we now are
to structure and
nourish and, eventually,
to animate
some overlaid
insouciant part, which
didn't used to be there
into a piece of
appreciable art.
